96) Fletch

Fletch (1985)

Director: Michael Ritchie

Starring: Chevy Chase, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Joe Don Baker, Tim Matheson, Richard Libertini, Geena Davis, George Wendt, M. Emmet Walsh, Kenneth Mars


For some reason, over the last year or so I've become quite intrigued by the American comedies of the 1980s. I think it started with an interest in Steve Martin. He is a guy who is held in quite high regard by a lot of comedians as one of the real greats, but that greatness is not so evident in The Pink Panther or Cheaper by the Dozen. I hadn't seen many of his earlier films which cemented his reputation. From there that interest extended to guys like Chevy Chase, aided by the fact I've quite enjoyed watching him in Community. About a year ago a friend of mine said he had watched Fletch and quite enjoyed it, so I'd stored it away on my mental things-to-do list. Saturday morning, Kate is out for breakfast, perfect time for something short and light.

Irwing Fletcher (Chase), Fletch to his friends, is an investigative reporter. In the middle of an undercover assignment trying to blow the lid off the Los Angeles beach drug trade, Fletch is approached by a wealthy young man, Alan Stanwyck (Matheson), with an unusual proposal. Stanwyck has bone cancer and has been told he has only a short while to live, and that his death will be a very painful one. Thinking Fletch is a hobo who could easily disappear, he offers him $50,000 to come back later in the week and murder him, so that his family can claim the generous life insurance policy that he has taken out, a policy which would be voided if he committed suicide. Smelling a rat, Fletch agrees to the arrangement, but sets about investigating things for himself.

I didn't know a great deal about Fletch before sitting down to watch it and it wasn't quite what I expected. When you look at the DVD cover and you see lots of images of Chevy Chase in all manner of different goofy costumes you assume that it is going to be some sort of Peter Sellers-like, though slightly more crass, comedy. Instead, what you get is quite a decent story. The premise itself is not at all comic, and neither are any of the supporting characters. The only comic feature in the film (if you discount the synth heavy 80s soundtrack) is the wise cracking Chevy Chase in the lead. The storyline of Fletch actually works quite well as a thriller. It was adapted from Gregory MacDonald's novel, with the comedy played up a bit to play to the strengths of Chase. You could very easily change the director and the lead actor and make a very good thriller out of the same premise.

The film was very obviously a star vehicle for Chase. In terms of characterisation, Chevy Chase is very much playing himself. He uses the persona he invented for himself on Saturday Night Live, with most of the film's comedy coming from cynical asides and wise cracks from Fletch. Some of those wise cracks hit the mark, others miss, but that is very much the nature of that style of comedy. If you don't like Chevy Chase you aren't going to like this movie. Actually, that may be going a bit far. If you don't like Chevy Chase you are going to find this film frustrating because his character will seemingly undermine what would otherwise be a very enjoyable film.

Gregory MacDonald had casting approval over the film and apparently rejected both Mick Jagger and Burt Reynolds for the title role before approving Chase. It would have been a very different picture if either of those guys had been playing the lead.

I'll admit, I quite enjoyed Fletch, precisely because it wasn't what I expected it to be, falling in between being a comedy and being a thriller. Because Chevy Chase plays the lead it is always going to be considered a comedy, and it you'll find it in the comedy section of your DVD store, but I'm not convinced it is that cut and dry generically. The fact that there was a bit more depth, and thus a bit more interest, in the central narrative than I'm used to in a comedy meant that there wasn't that pressure to be constantly making gags and I was more forgiving of those moments when the comedy fell a bit flat. It also made for a nice alternative to recent comedies which tend to lean towards the more comical and ridiculous premises, in which you have a comic lead surrounded by comic support characters, spouting comic lines and gags in comic situations which arise from a comic narrative. It's a bit one dimensional. Good comedy needs a straight guy, and in Fletch that straight guy is played by everyone and everything other than Fletch himself.

95) The Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Director: Victor Fleming

Starring: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke, The Singer Midgets


Kate and I went to see Wicked last night for the second time. We saw it about a year ago and with its Sydney season in its final weeks we thought we should catch it once more before it disappears. It's brilliant. I thoroughly recommend it to any who haven't seen it. I came home inspired to have another look at the original Wizard of Oz, a film I haven't seen in at least a dozen years.

A young farm girl from Kansas named Dorothy (Garland) finds herself transported to the magical land of Oz when her house is swept up in a twister. Her only way to get home is to make her way to the Emerald City and ask for help from the Wizard (Morgan). On her journey along the yellow brick road she meets up with a Scarecrow in need of a brain (Bolger), a Tim Man in need of a heart (Haley) and a Lion in need of some courage (Lahr), all of whom join her on her journey.

What makes The Wizard of Oz such a classic is that it has this elegant simplicity without being emotionally shallow. If you were to read the screenplay for the film it would almost read like a primary school play, not surprisingly Best Screenplay was not among it's seven Oscar nominations. The dialogue, conversations and interactions between characters are really basic. The scenes are also quite simple. The sequence of events that occur in Oz is really straightforward, lacking any real twists and turns in the plot. Yet despite this overall simplicity of the film, there is an emotional resonance which comes through. The story manages to tap into emotions connected with the experience of growing up, the venturing out from home, the longing to return, the feelings of not being smart enough, emotionally strong enough or brave enough. It really is amazing the way that such a simple and simply told story can really draw out an emotional response. Credit for that should go to Judy Garland. She really gives the film its emotional centre. There is a great vulnerability to her performance when so many other child actors could too easily have slipped into overly hammy vaudeville mode to match their surroundings.

While I compare her to other child actors, she was sixteen or seventeen at the time so was more of a young lady. So much so that Fleming ordered that her breasts be taped down to make her appear younger. When George Lucas made the same demand of Carrie Fisher in Star Wars she would later joke, "There's no jiggling in the Empire." Evidently there is no jiggling in Oz either.

If you are compiling a list of great moments in the history of cinema you would have to include the moment when Dorothy steps out of her house into Oz and in the process steps out of black and white and into the wonderful world of Technicolor. The brightness and vibrancy of the colour really hits you and despite the fact that there is nothing natural looking about Oz, you are very obviously looking at a sound stage, the transition from browny-grey into bright colour is still breathtaking.

If you want an alternative way of reading the narrative to The Wizard of Oz, you can't go past a famous plot synopsis that TV reviewer Rick Polito published in his column in the Marin Independent Journal. His summary of The Wizard of Oz read as follows: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.” Classic!

Both times that I saw Wicked one of the main questions that I left with was why were the shoes given to the Witches sister silver when everyone knows that they are meant to be red. They are, after all, called the ruby slippers. However, I have since discovered that in L. Frank Baum's original book they were silver. The origin of the famous ruby slippers is the film. It was for the movie that they were switched from silver to red, because red looked more dazzling in Technicolor.

It is a sign of a different time when you look down the credits list and see that the munchkins were played by 'The Singer Midgets', a vaudeville group comprised of little people and named after their founder Leo Singer. When the credits came up, I thought the fact that they were called the Singer Midgets was bad enough, but when I found out that the Singer wasn't because they sang, but rather the name of the owner of the group, that was just a bit off.

The Wizard of Oz is a beautifully simple film which is one of the bona fide classics, not because it is one of the best films ever made, but because it contains so many memorable scenes, lines, images, characters and songs. Even if you've managed to live your entire life so far without having seen The Wizard of Oz I guarantee if you were to sit down and watch it it would feel strangely familiar simply due to the enormous impact it has had on popular culture.

94) District 9

District 9 (2009)

Director: Niell Blomkamp

Starring: Sharlto Copley, David James, Louis Minnaar, Vanessa Haywood


I received some news of a personal nature today which was sufficiently distressing that after a vein attempt at continuing with my thesis work I decided to abandon it for the day. I decided to watch a movie to get my mind off things, so went for something I'd seen before and I knew I'd enjoy, Niell Blomkamp's debut feature District 9.

Almost 30 years ago a massive spaceship came to a halt over the South African capital of Johannesburg. For humanitarian reasons the aliens on board, found to be horribly malnourished, were brought down and settled in District 9. Over time the fear of the human population lead to the security around District 9 being upgraded to the point that it resembled a prison. Finally the decision was made to relocate the aliens, derogatorily known as 'prawns', to a custom made facility further away from the city. The private corporation MNU, Multi-National United, who were in charge of policing District 9 are now charged with relocating the prawns. Bureaucrat Wikus van der Merwe (Copley) is given the task of overseeing the operation. While delivering eviction notices in District 9 Wikus becomes infected with a mysterious alien fluid which sees him start to slowly transform into an alien. With the scientists at MNU now keen to experiment on him the only place Wikus can hide is in District 9, where he teams up with a prawn named Christopher Johnson who is planning an escape mission.

District 9's South African setting instantly creates connections between the science fiction narrative unfolding on screen and South Africa's apartheid history. The move first to restrict the 'prawns' to a defined area and then to move them further away from the city all takes on a greater significance because that city is Johannesburg. The fact that the area the 'prawns' are restricted to is called District 9 is an obvious reference to Cape Town's District 6, where Cape Town's coloured population lived before it was bulldozed to force their relocation. While the connections between District 9 and apartheid South Africa are blatant, Blomkamp insists that they are not meant to be direct metaphors. This is a film generally about prejudice rather than specifically about prejudice in South Africa. Regardless of whether the metaphor is specific or general, it is very clever and it is this use of the science fiction genre in aid of social commentary that really sets the film apart from nearly every science fiction film of the last decade.

Blomkamp employs a mocumentary style in telling his story. This mocumentary style is useful for getting information across to the viewer in a very direct manner. Early in the film the mocumentary style allows Blomkamp to establish the scenario relatively quickly, when more traditional film styles would have taken quite some time to explain just how a slum of aliens came to be living in Johannesburg. However the film seems to slip in and out of this documentary pretence, with some scenes very obviously shot as though there was a documentary crew present and others taking place in locations and situations in which there is no way there could be a documentary crew. The fact that the film switches between two different modes is not problematic, so much as the fact that these transitions seem to be arbitrary.

While District 9 is a science fiction film which is much more concerned with story and themes than it is with spectacle, the special effects in the film are still very impressive for a film made with only a mid-sized budget. It's estimated budget of US$30million is pretty meagre for a film with CGI characters (as a point of comparison, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, released in the same year, had an estimated budget of around US$200million). The computer generated prawns look very lifelike and interact believably with the real life actors.

One thing I will note though, for a film which has at its core a message of racial tolerance, the Nigerian characters are shown in a rather derogatory light. I don't know enough about African national relations to make an informed comment, I just noted that they were looked at almost as inhumanely as the prawns.

A little bit of trivia for you, in South Africa a generic character by the name van der Merwe features in a series of jokes, called 'van der Merwe jokes'. These jokes made fun of the Afrikaner ruling class, as van der Merwe was a reasonably common Afrikaner name, with the van der Merwe in the joke always being a bit of a simpleton. So for a South African audience having this bumbling central character with the surname van der Merwe taps into a existing comic tradition which they would have been well aware of.

District 9 was really the surprise packet of last year. It came out of absolutely nowhere, really only attracting people's attention because Peter Jackson believed in the project enough to allow them to stick his name front and centre on the poster, but seemed to impress everyone who saw it. I was really glad that this picked up a Best Picture nomination at this years Academy Awards, even if it was quite obviously one of the token six through ten nominations., because it's a really clever and original film and really great example of the potential for genres like science fiction to be used to comment on real world issues. After watching it again it must be said that District 9 suffers a bit on the second viewing. Without the element of surprise that came from it's complete obscurity it didn't quite blow me away like it did the first time. But that doesn't mean it isn't great. I'm saying that on second thoughts it might be a four-and-a-half star film rather than a five star film. Regardless it is still an excellent film and here's hoping Blomkamp can back it up with something equally impressive rather than be a flash in the pan.

93) Dances With Wolves

Dances With Wolves (1990)

Director: Kevin Costner

Starring: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant, Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman, Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse

There are a number of films that I really want to see but have always been put off by exorbitant running times. One of those films was Dances With Wolves. I have a real soft spot for a good Western and it won a bag of Oscars so I was keen to see it, but the Special Edition version I have on DVD has a run time of 227mins. You don't watch a film that is just under 4hrs long on a whim, you kind of have to build your day around it. But with Kate away, and me having an afternoon to myself I figured this was just the kind of day I could build around it.

Civil War hero, Lt. John Dunbar (Costner), is granted his request for a post on the Western frontier. He finds Fort Sedgwick abandoned, but chooses to set up camp there anyway and go about his duties. Initially kept company by his trusty steed Cisco and a curious wolf who he names Two Socks, Dunbar soon discovers a local Sioux Indian tribe are keeping an eye on him. Dunbar seeks to open communication with the Sioux and finds an equally curious party in holy man Kicking Bird (Greene). Communication is difficult and slow until Kicking Bird convinces Stands With A Fist (McDonnell) a white woman who has lived with the tribe since childhood to act as a translator. Dunbar grows closer and closer to not only the Sioux people, who give him the Sioux name, Dances With Wolves, but to Stands With A Fist as well. When more soldiers show up at Fort Sedgwick, Dunbar must decide whose side he now stands on.

When Costner's film was in production, many critics and industry insiders dismissively dubbed the film "Kevin's Gate". This was in reference to Michael Cimino's 1980 film Heaven's Gate, an equally ambitious epic Western which cost $42 million to produce and took less than $3 million at the box office, leading to the collapse of United Artists. Part of the reason so many critics and industry insiders saw Dances With Wolves as an enormous gamble was because it was a Western. The Western is the most American of film genres with a very proud tradition, but by the beginning of the 1990s Westerns had become very unfashionable. So for Costner to choose to make his directorial debut with a very ambitious, epic scale Western just seemed ludicrous. But Dances With Wolves was to be no ordinary Western. Costner seemed determined to make amends for the hundreds of small-minded and racist Westerns that had been made over the years. Costner's film imagines what things could have been like if the white settlers had a genuine interest in learning about Native American culture. Not only does he show the Sioux culture and people in an overwhelmingly positive light ("I had never known a people so eager to laugh, so devoted to family, so dedicated to each other. And the only word that came to mind was harmony."), he allows them to speak in their own language with significant portions of the film being in Sioux with English subtitles. Just how effectively Costner alters previous cinematic perceptions can be shown in the films final battle scene. What looks to be a fairly conventional battle between machete and bow and arrow wielding Indians and rifle carrying Blue Coats is transformed by the audiences altered perspective, seeing the Blue Coats, not the Indians, as the savages. Costner's decision to make a Western was a bold movie, but it paid off with Dances With Wolves becoming the first Western to win the Best Picture Oscar since Cimarron in 1931.

Dances With Wolves definitely has an epic scope. It is just a big, grand feeling movie, in which Costner shows his love for the lost American Frontier. A lot of screen time is given to the landscape. Rather than just using wide shots to establish a scene, Costner really wants us to appreciate the beauty of the place so the film is packed with long, breathtaking pictures of the prairies. The stunning cinematography was shot by Australian Dean Semler. He originally rose to prominence though as the cinematographer on Mad Max 2 and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, which when you think about it, were the perfect preparation for a film like Dances With Wolves as they're all about landscape with explosions of action. Semler has gone on to have a very fruitful Hollywood career as a cinematographer working on larger scale adventures and dramas; 2012, Apocalypto, We Were Soldiers and Waterworld, and surprisingly also on comedies; Date Night, Get Smart, Bruce Almighty and City Slickers (an interesting combination of both).

The film is obviously long and it is quite slowly paced, taking time to explore events and emotions in detail, but to Costner's credit it never gets tedious. I've watched much shorter films which have felt much longer. What I did feel the film was lacking though was a build to some sort of dramatic climax. Rather than taking you on an emotional roller coaster ride, the tone of this film is very level, very consistent. There is no build to a critical moment and thus the film feels a bit like it just ends. There is a logical moment at which the film ends, but that moment is no more climactic than any number of moments that had occurred earlier in the film and as such does not feel like it closes the story.

Dances With Wolves harks back to a bygone era. I'm not talking about Frontier America, I'm talking about the era in which Kevin Costner was a big star. In the late 1980s and early 1990s they didn't come much bigger. He was in a string of very good films, including The Untouchables, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Dances With Wolves and JFK as well as blockbuster star vehicles like Robin Hood: Prince of Theives and The Bodyguard. However things kind of came crashing down for him with Waterworld and The Postman being high profile flops in the mid-late 1990s. He's continued to work pretty solidly since then but has never managed to regain the position in the industry he once held. I've seen him in a number of things, and kind of like him but find his massive fame in the early 1990s a bit perplexing. He's shown, particularly with Dances With Wolves, that he's a reasonably talented guy, but he's not talented enough to have the artistic prestige that gets associated with a Leonardo DiCaprio, likewise he's handsome enough but doesn't seem to have the charisma you associate with a big time movie star like a George Clooney.

For some reason I came into this film expecting to be underwhelmed. I think because the film is so inextricably linked to Kevin Costner, a figure whose star has fallen significantly in the last 20 years, that it would not retain the lustre that it had on its release. Thanks to that lowered expectation I ended up being pleasantly surprised. Dances With Wolves is an absolutely beautiful picture. It looks amazing. The story is carefully and lovingly told, and time is taken to explore subtle detail. The excessive run time is always going to be an issue, but if you've broken your leg or if you're sick or the family has gone away or if you have any similar excuse to justify spending 4hrs on the couch it's definitely one to watch.

92) Gran Torino

Gran Torino (2008)

Director: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Christopher Carley, Doua Moua, Brian Haley, Geraldine Hughes, Dreama Walker, Brian Howe, John Carrol Lynch

After Bad Lieutenant and Brazil failed to tickle my fancy yesterday, I decided to go for something that was a bit of a sure thing. I saw Gran Torino in the cinemas when it came out early last year and loved it and I've been wanting to see it again ever since.

Recently widowed Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) is one of the last Caucasian Americans in a neighbourhood that is fast becoming a Hmong community. Walt is particularly unimpressed with his new Hmong neighbours. Under pressure from a local Hmong gang, Walt's young neighbour Thao (Vang) tries to steal his 1972 Gran Torino, only to be caught in the act, putting a further strain on the relationship. However, when Walt rescues Thao from abduction by the gang, he becomes celebrated as a local hero. He then takes it upon himself to try and reform Thao, and in the process becomes a surrogate father figure to the teen. Through his relationships with Thao and his sister Sue (Her), Walt becomes close to his new neighbours, realising he actually has more in common with them than his own family. When the Hmong gang continue their attacks Thau and his family, Walt decides that he has to do something about it.

Clint Eastwood publicly stated that Gran Torino would be his final acting role and what an absolute cracker of a role it is. Early on it was rumoured that Gran Torino was to be the final final installment in the Dirty Harry series. While this rumour proved to be unfounded, the similarities in the character are there. Walt Kowalski is like a retired Harry Callahan. He is exactly the tough-as-nails, take-no-crap character Eastwood became famous for playing. But what makes it work so brilliantly in Gran Torino is that Eastwood plays him with just the slightest hint of self parody. Clint obviously knows he's getting on a bit, he was 78 at the time, and is probably too old to be playing the same characters he was in his 40s and 50s, so he puts a slight spin on this one. It really is the perfect curtain call for Eastwood's acting career. In Gran Torino he gives us touching moments, surprisingly funny moments and he gets to be gruff in the way that only he can.

Gran Torino is kind of a one man show though. Eastwood dominates the film in terms of time on screen, but also in terms of the power of his presence. There are no other real standouts in the cast. Open casting calls were held for Hmong actors in Hmong communities in Detroit, St. Paul and Fresno. These casting calls saw the majority of Hmong parts going to non-actors or at least actors with no previous film experience. In fact Doua Moua was the only Hmong actor to appear in the film who had a previous screen credit. While this use of non-actors gave a certain authenticity to some of the larger family scenes in the film, at times the performances of some of the lead actors, particularly Vang and Her missed the mark a bit. Generally they were fine, but certain moments, especially moments of high tension, their performance fell a bit short. This particularly showed next to Eastwood who puts in such a strong, engaging performance. In Invictus, Eastwood would again call on non-actors to fill out some of the bit parts in the film, such as some of Matt Damon's teammates, so it is obviously a strategy he likes to employ, but in Gran Torino I think it impacted the film a bit.

One of the things which confronts you quite early in the film is some of the racist taunting. Walt fought in the Korean War and worked for decades in the Ford factory only to see the auto industry overtaken by Japanese cars, so he has a level of animosity towards Asians. He seems to have an endless stream of nicknames for his new Hmong neighbours; 'gooks', 'fish heads', 'slopes', 'chinks' and 'zipper heads'. Screenwriter Nick Schenk really must have given his racist old man thesaurus a hammering in getting this screenplay together. While there are moments early in the film where your jaw almost hits the flaw in "I can't believe he just said that" disbelief, as the film goes on Walt's racist jibes start to bite less. For starters we come to realise that, as one reviewer put it, Walt is an "equal opportunity hater". He doesn't just dislike the Hmong people, he dislikes everyone. In fact even his own family are treated no better than his new neighbours. As the film goes on Walt grows closer to his Hmong neighbours but the name calling persists. They take it in surprisingly good spirit and through that we realise that Walt's racial slander is not so much hateful or spiteful, but just of who he is. There is a scene in which Walt visits his barber and the two taunt each other, in good fun, about a number of things, race being one of them. The barber is a 'Dago'. Walt is a 'Polack'. As the film goes on we excuse Walt's seeming racism as a marker of his age and his life experience. A warning though, there are occasions on which Walt will make you laugh with some of the things he says and in hindsight you will probably feel just a bit wrong for doing it.

While Gran Torino doesn't seem to be quite on the same scale as some of Eastwood's other recent directorial efforts (Invictus, Million Dollar Baby, Changeling, Mystic River), it has been his highest grossing film as a director. It is a really good film, and was one of the surprises packets of 2009, that is if you can consider Clint Eastwood making a good film as being a surprise. It is touching, funny and really engaging and a perfect farewell for a screen legend.

91) Brazil

Brazil (1985)

Director: Terry Gilliam

Starring: Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro, Ian Holm, Katherine Helmond, Michael Palin, Bob Hoskins, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughan, Jim Broadbent

After Bad Lieutenant I needed something a bit lighter to get that taste out of my mouth. I didn't know a great deal about Brazil. I knew it was directed by Terry Gilliam, I knew it was a kind of dystopian future type film and I knew it had a pretty impressive cast, so I thought I'd give it a crack.

Sam Lowry (Pryce) is a civil servant in a futuristic society bureaucratic state which is hopelessly convoluted and inefficient. He is assigned to investigate a computer mix-up which has seen a shoe repairman, Mr. Buttle, arrested and accidentally killed in the place of a wanted terrorist, renegade air-conditioner repairman Harry Tuttle (De Niro). Buttle's neighbour Jill Layton (Greist), has been trying to report the mistake to the authorities, but the hopeless inefficiency of the bureaucracy makes the process tedious. When Sam crosses paths with Jill he realises that she is the woman who has been appearing in his dreams, the object of his affection, who he wishes to escape his life with.

The first question that strikes you once you've watched Brazil is why on earth is it called Brazil? It isn't set in Brazil. There is no mention of the country. There is no character or thing called Brazil in the picture. So why is it called Brazil? The title for the film was originally going to be '1984 and a 1/2' intended to reference both George Orwell's 1984, an obvious influence on the film's plot, as well as Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. However when Michael Radford's film version, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was released the decision was made to change the title. The title, Brazil, comes from a song called 'Aquarela do Brazil' which is used throughout the film. Why that song is significant though, I have no idea.

Terry Gilliam had a terrible time trying to get Brazil into cinemas. Universal was unhappy with Gilliam's cut of the film and ordered him to re-edit it. When he did, they still weren't happy with it and refused to release it. This led to a very ugly, very public feud with then Universal head Sid Sheinberg. In an example of how public this feud was, Gilliam and De Niro appeared on 'Good Morning America' while the film was still awaiting a release. When the host asked Gilliam, "I hear you're having trouble with the studio. Is this correct?" he responded with, "No, I'm having trouble with Sid Sheinberg, here is an 8x10 photo of him." He then produced a photo of him for the cameras. Gilliam managed to screen his cut of the film to a film class at USC under the guise of it being an 'audio visual aid'. He screened it multiple times there over a fortnight. During the screenings a number of film critics saw the film and it was awarded the Los Angeles film critics Best Picture of the Year award, which provided enough leverage for Gilliam to get the film released the way he wanted it.

It is interesting that the film seems to be very much a part of that dystopian future genre which gave us films like Blade Runner, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Mad Max 2. It has a kind of retro-futuristic feel to it however the film is not actually set in the future. A title comes up at the beginning of the film to say that it is "Somewhere in the 20th century." This film was made in 1985, so there still was a bit of future 20th century to come, but it seemed to suggest that rather than a dystopian future we were supposed to read the film as an alternate, dystopian version of today.

The storyline is at times hard to follow. That is not due to it being an overly complex or convoluted narrative, rather there are just moments in the film where you aren't quite sure how this relates to the story.

One aspect of the film which resonates a bit more today is it's focus on terrorism. In the film terror attacks have become so frequent that they are almost a part of everyday life. There is a scene in which Sam is at a restaurant with his mother and her friend when a bomb goes off. The staff's response is simply to come and set up a fold out screen beside their table so they can continue their lunch without having to look at the destruction. Sam seems to be one of very few characters in the film who is actually still genuinely emotionally effected by terrorism. It was interesting to watch today living in a world where terrorist attacks seem so frequent on the news that unless they are really big, they just get passed over as just another everyday event.

I have to confess I was a bit disappointed with this one. There are wildly differing opinions on Brazil. Some rate it as a classic, a masterpiece, while others don't quite get it. I think I fall in the latter camp. It just didn't grip me. I'm not sure if it didn't grip me because I was having trouble following the story or whether I was having trouble following the story because it wasn't gripping me, but either way I didn't really engage with the film. It has some interesting moments, some funny moments, but it's not one that I can't wait to watch again.

90) Bad Lieutenant

Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Director: Abel Ferrara

Starring: Harvey Keitel, Frankie Thorn, Victor Argo, Paul Calderon, Leonard L. Thomas, Paul Hipp

Kate's gone down the coast for the weekend which means it's movie marathon time. I started with Abel Ferrara's controversial film Bad Lieutenant. It wasn't a film I really knew all that much about, but none the less it has been one which has been on my radar for a while so I thought I'd give it a look, being reasonably confident it was a film Kate would have zero interest in seeing.

A New York Police Department lieutenant (Keitel) is drowning in an ever increasing gambling debt and growing dependence on various illicit substances. When he becomes involved in the investigation of the rape of a young nun (Thorn) he starts to consider the lifestyle he leads.

It's quite difficult to write a plot synopsis for Bad Lieutenant because the plot is seemingly so unimportant. The central event of the film appears to be the rape of the young nun, but it is not as though the investigation of that crime becomes the focus of the film. Rather, Bad Lieutenant is a character study of a man in free fall. In case the title didn't make it apparent, Harvey Keitel plays a lieutenant who is bad. In the film his nameless character, simply credited as 'The Lieutenant' gambles, visits a prostitute, steals, deals drugs, takes drugs (lots and lots of drugs), tampers with evidence and, in a particularly confronting and intimidating scene, masturbates in front of two girls, minors who he has caught driving their father's car without his permission. He is a character study of depravity. There is simply nothing redeeming about the lieutenant. It is a confrontingly honest and intense performance by Keitel, capturing the utter implosion of a human being. Ultimately you'd have to say it is a courageous performance because you couldn't imagine many actors would want to be seen in that light.

A natural point of comparison for Abel Ferrara is Martin Scorsese, though such a comparison might be a bit flattering to Ferrara. Like Scorsese, Ferrara is a very New York centric filmmaker, with a lot of his films being set on the mean streets of New York city. Like Scorsese, Ferrara doesn't shy away from confronting his audience with scenes of violence and drug use. And like Scorsese, Ferrara's work contain interesting religious undercurrents. Bad Lieutenant has a definite Scorsese vibe in terms of the themes it explores, and also in it's narrative structure. It is only more recently that Scorsese's works have become narrative focused. In the 1970s particularly, Scorsese's work, like Bad Lieutenant, was about the characters rather than the narrative. But while it has a Scorsese vibe, it is very much a sub-Scorsese feel. Ferrara's film lacks the polish and sophistication of Scorsese's work, but this is understandable given his background is in B-films and the exploitation market. Ferrara made a name for himself with violent exploitation films like Driller Killer and Angel of Vengeance. A growing cult following allowed him greater budgets and access to bigger name stars. His height was probably in the early 1990s when he made not only Bad Lieutenant, but King of New York which boasted a cast including Christopher Walken, David Caruso, Laurence Fishburne, Wesley Snipes and Steve Buscemi.

It should be noted that Werner Herzog's recent film The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans starring Nicholas Cage is not actually a remake of or a sequel to Ferrara's film. Herzog claims that there is no connection between the two films, although it must be said that there are some similarities. Ferrara wouldn't have a bar of Herzog's claims of it not being connected, saying: "I wish these people die in Hell. I hope they're all in the same streetcar and it blows up." Quite a character.

In another piece of trivia, Bad Lieutenant is the third film in which I've seen Harvey Keitel naked. He also de-robes in The Piano and Holy Smoke. After those three films I think I can safely say that I've seen more of Harvey Keitel's penis than I really needed to.

This movie is not about entertainment or enjoyment. You don't bring popcorn to Bad Lieutenant. This is an in-depth character study of a man crumbling under the weight of his own self-destructive tendencies. For mine, this film is all about Harvey Keitel's performance. Keitel is a very well respected actor, but doesn't quite have the profile of some of his peers (DeNiro, Pacino, Hoffman), but there are very few actors who could portray a character as disgraceful as the Lieutenant with as much conviction and honesty as Keitel does here.

89) Inception

Inception (2010)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine, Pete Postlethwaite

Nearly every night of the week I have a regular commitment, but the one which is consistently vacant is Thursday night which is brilliantly convenient because it means I can catch films on the day they are released (if you were unaware, films are released on a Thursday in Australia). So there was no way I was going to miss an opening day screening of what was, for me and I'm assuming a lot of other people, the most anticipated film of the year.

Cobb (DiCaprio) is an extractor. People employ him and his team to break into people's minds via their dreams and steal information. Cobb is approached by businessman Saito (Watanabe) about a job with a difference. Saito wants Cobb and his team to perform inception, that is, to plant an idea in someones mind rather than steal it. That someone is Robert Fischer Jr. (Murphy), the son of a major energy tycoon, and that idea is for him to dismantle his father's empire when he inherits it. While inception is very difficult, and the job is highly risky, Saito promises to use his influence to make it possible for Cobb to return to the USA, where he is a wanted man, and see his children for the first time in years, a carrot too good to refuse.

All the talk in the lead up to the film was that it was The Matrix meets James Bond. I think that is an ok comparison, though I'd be inclined to say it is what The Matrix could have been if it had better actors (in no situation does Keanu Reeves trump Leonardo DiCaprio) and a slightly better script, with characters with a bit of emotional depth, to match a good concept. I prefer the comparison made by a review in Empire magazine; that it is like a James Bond movie written by Charlie Kauffman. Either way, these comparisons are just a guide because once you've seen it all comparisons go out the window and it stands on its own.

What I loved was that the film had this deep, complex narrative structure, but you never got lost. When you're dealing with dreams, and dreams within dreams, and dreams within dreams within dreams, with all three layers of narrative operating simultaneously things can get pretty complex. But Nolan has laid the groundwork earlier with a lot of exposition, though not delivered in such a way that it is tedious, so that while Inception can achieve great complexity without losing it's clarity. Also, the use of the dream world was so clever because it instantly made things relatable for the audience. We understand the way that in a dream the most amazing things can happen and it's not until you wake up that you realise something was strange. We know exactly the sensation they are talking about when they describe 'the kick'; that sudden feeling of falling that wakes you up. While operating in a dream scape has made anything possible for Nolan, he has chosen to ground his dream world using a kind of logic which we as viewers can understand.

Christopher Nolan is so hot right now. The guy seriously can't miss. He has owned the 2000s in a manner akin to Coppola's dominance of the 1970s or Spielberg's dominance of the 1980s and 1990s. He has made six films since 2000: Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and now Inception. The only one of those which wasn't excellent was Insomnia, but even it wasn't all that bad. He has consistently increased the scope and scale of his films, taking things to the next level when we didn't think there was one. Seriously, who'd have thought he could go up a notch after The Dark Knight? But he has done it with Inception. I'd say he's easily the most exciting mainstream directorial talent to have emerged since Quentin Tarantino burst onto the scene in the early 1990s.

While I'm heaping praise on Christopher Nolan, the question must also be asked, is there an actor in the world who picks their films better than Leonardo DiCaprio? You just have to look at some of the directors who he has worked with. It is an absolute who's who of directors of the last 20 years. Of course he has a fruitful working relationship with Martin Scorsese which has already yielded four films, but he has also worked with Steven Spielberg (Catch Me If You Can), Woody Allen (Celebrity), James Cameron (Titanic), Ridley Scott (Body of Lies), Danny Boyle (The Beach), Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road), Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet) and now Christopher Nolan. And he's not done. His next screen appearance will be as J. Edgar Hoover in Clint Eastwood's upcoming Hoover. DiCaprio backs up his stellar performance in Shutter Island earlier in the year with another brilliant display in Inception. He is fantastic in this film, giving it the emotional grounding that it needed in order for audiences to really get on board with and emotionally engage with the story. It's not the sort of film that wins Oscars for actors, but hey, The Dark Knight wasn't supposed to be either. Hopefully early next year DiCaprio will find himself with at least one Oscar nomination to mark what has been a very impressive year.

One aspect of the film I haven't made my mind up on is the very last shot. Those who have seen it will know what I'm talking about. For those who haven't I'm not going to ruin it by describing what happens. But it is obviously meant to be this moment of revelation, or at least doubt, where you go "Woah! Is this a dream?" But for me it felt a bit to self conscious and I found that as I was watching it, my thought process was one step removed from what they were aiming for. Rather than that "Woah! Is this a dream?" shock, I was thinking, "I see what he is trying to do here." At the end of Blade Runner you are left with that question, is Deckard a replicant, inspired by the appearance of the paper unicorn, and that is really effective. For me, the final moment of Inception felt a bit more gimmicky.

Inception has lived up to the hype. It is a brilliant film and is going to make an absolute killing at the box office. It is easily one of the best films of the last decade and what makes it even better is that it is an original story. It is not a sequel. It is not a remake of an old movie or television show. It is not an adaptation from a literary source. Heck, it's not even in 3D. It is just a good, old fashioned, original idea brilliantly executed. Great script. Great cast. Great effects. Great director. Great film.

88) The African Queen

The African Queen (1951)

Director: John Huston

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley


I have a real soft spot for the golden era of Hollywood studio filmmaking that stretched from the 1930s through to the 1950s. There is something about that classical Hollywood style which I really enjoy. But despite this I there are still a lot of gaps in terms of what I've seen from that era. One of the biggest gaps was John Huston's The African Queen. I've really enjoyed some of Huston and Bogart's other collaborations so was interested to see this one.

When word reaches missionaries Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her brother Samuel (Morley) in the colony of German Eastern Africa, they find themselves in hostile territory. After German soldiers torch the village they were working in, the shock of which kills Samuel, Rose has no choice but to flee escape with the rough-around-the-edges ferry master, Charlie Allnut (Bogart), on board the African Queen. While Charlie is keen to find a place where the can moor and wait for everything to blow over, Rose's innate patriotism demands she take action. She concocts a scheme to use the explosives on board to turn the African Queen into a torpedo, drive it down the river and ram it into the German warship, the Louisa, which guards the delta, preventing Allied vessels from entering.

As far as genre goes, this is a road movie, or rather a river movie, with 90% of the film being concerned with their journey downstream. This also means that for 90% of the film, the only characters we have are Charlie and Rose, which is why it was so important that those parts be played by engaging actors. Amazingly, The African Queen is the only film in which Hollywood legends Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn share the screen, and they really make the film. The fact that the narrative allows for maximum screen time for these two legends, with the two of them going head to head without the distraction of other characters, is great to watch. However, I do think that they were a bit let down by the screenplay. As much as the story is about their mission to destroy the Louisa it is also about the romantic tension between the two, and I think the shift from at-each-others-throats tension to madly in love is just a bit sudden, and probably also happens a bit early in the film. There really isn't anywhere to go from there and they spend the rest of the film looking doughy eyed at each other.

Humphrey Bogart won his only Oscar for his performance as Charlie Allnut. Part of made Bogart's performance a standout was that he effectively shook off his stylish image to play a boozy old salt. That being said, I couldn't help but notice some similarities between The African Queen and another Bogart film, Casablanca. Both films capture a moment within the context of a World War. In both cases the events which unfold are not officially military actions, but are still doing their bit for the war effort. In the case of Casablanca it was supplying rebellion leader Victor Lazlo with transit papers which enabled him to escape from the Nazis. In The African Queen it was sailing the African Queen down the river to take out the Louisa and open up the delta to allied forces. Also, in both cases Bogart plays a man who is determined to stay out of the conflict but ultimately can not ignore his innate morality. It just really struck me when watching the film that while on the outside Bogart's character looks completely different than we are used to seeing him, he is still playing a part that is very much familiar to him.

The African Queen has one of those great Production Code era suggested sex scenes. Because of the strict guidelines of the Production Code films were not allowed to show sex scenes so filmmakers had to think up other suggestive ways of implying them. This is the era that gave us fireworks, trains going into tunnels and popping champagne corks. In The African Queen it is slightly more subtle than that, but not much. After making it safely past the German fortress Rose and Charlie are overcome with emotion and finally kiss each other. The image then fades to black. When it fades back in we find Rose quietly making two cups of tea while staring adoringly at Charlie who lies asleep on the bed which is obviously made up for more than one. She then brings the tea in and sits next to him, waking him by calling him "Darling." They may as well have just faded back in on the two of them lying next to each other smoking cigarettes.

The African Queen is a good film, but if I'm honest, I was probably a bit disappointed by it. The storyline was good enough and provided a great opportunity to watch these two screen legends go head to head, but there was nothing subtle about the relationship between the two characters. In 1951 Marlon Brando was only just about to burst on to the scene and thus method acting and naturalism were a while off become the standard in acting, so the performances in The African Queen felt a bit overly theatrical, especially on Hepburn's part. So while The African Queen was good, it isn't one of the absolute classics of that golden era of Hollywood filmmaking like I expected it to be.

87) Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Frederic Forrest, Mako, Elias Koteas, Christian Slater, Nina Siemaszko, Dean Goodman, Lloyd Bridges

I'm currently working on a thesis chapter relating to Francis Ford Coppola and one of the films which I think will be quite important to that chapter is a film he made for George Lucas's production company called Tucker: The Man and His Dream. I saw it for the first time last year on a ratty old VHS copy in the university library, but have since managed to get my own copy on DVD so wanted to give it another look.

In the late 1940s, American designer, entrepreneur and huckster Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges) had an idea for a car which would revolutionise the automotive industry. The Tucker Torpedo included safety innovations like seat belts, a pop-out windscreen, shatter-proof glass windows, disc brakes, a third headlight that would turn with the front wheels, as well as fuel injection and a rear engine. Without the funds to start production, Tucker and his business partner Abe Karatz (Landau) set about selling stocks in the company and sales contracts, while failing to let anyone know that there were actually no Tucker Torpedoes in existence. Soon they gather up enough money to construct a prototype from parts found in a junkyard. From the prototype they get the go ahead to start construction. But while Tucker is touring the country promoting the car, the new CEO of the Tucker Corporation, Bennington (Goodman) and his team one by one start to strip away Tucker's innovations until the product hardly resembles his design. Meanwhile, the big automotive companies from Detroit start to worry that it would cost them millions to catch up with Tucker's innovations, so use their clout to organise an SEC enquiry to shed light on Tucker's questionable business methods. Tucker must then fight not only to keep himself out of prison, but to save his car, his company, his integrity and his dream.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream is likely not as familiar to you as some of Coppola's other films. In the 1980s Coppola did not have quite the same level of clout he enjoyed in Hollywood in the 1970s. After a decade in which he directed four films (The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now), with all getting at least a nomination for Best Picture he was riding high. In 1980 he used the money he had made from Apocalypse Now to purchase the old Hollywood General studio lot and turn his production company, American Zoetrope, into a fully fledged studio. The problem was that he didn't quite have the operating capitol required to run a studio, so the survival of Zoetrope Studios depended on the immediate success of his next project. That next project, a film called One From the Heart, was a massive flop. Within a couple of years Zoetrope Studios was forced to shut down and Coppola spent the rest of the 1980s and 1990s working as a gun for hire in order to pay off his debtors. Occasionally he would get up a film which was a more personal project, like Tucker, but even then he did not have the clout to convince a major studio to finance a big production. Thus the films that Coppola made after 1980 lack a lot of the prestige that is associated with his work from the 1970s. But that doesn't mean that none of them are good, and it also doesn't mean that none of them are interesting.

Probably the most interesting thing about this film are the obvious parallels between the lives of Preston Tucker and Francis Coppola. Considering when the film was released and the events of the previous few years, it was not lost of many critics that Tucker: The Man and His Dream could be read as pretty much an autobiographical film. Both Tucker and Coppola were dreamers who had ideas they thought would revolutionise a very powerful industry, but both were squashed by the big companies before they could really make an impact. For Tucker it was advanced safety features. For Coppola it was video and digital technology. And while Detroit was able to squash the Tucker Corporation and Hollywood was able to squash Zoetrope Studios, in both cases the innovations that were being worked on found their way into mainstream use.

When you know a bit about Coppola and Zoetrope and the context that this film came out of it can be quite an interesting film. However, if you take all that extra information away the film is nice enough, without blowing you away at any point. It has a really sugar-coated, positive, light and shiny feel to it, which Coppola attributed to the influence of George Lucas. Lucas was determined that Coppola should make it an upbeat and uplifting, family friendly film. With that being the case Tucker: The Man and His Dream fails to be all that hard hitting as a biography. We get no real insight into the who Preston Tucker is and what makes him tick and as a result the weakness of this film ends up being the character of Tucker. This means that the fact that it is a true story seems largely irrelevant. Rather than shedding any light on the story it merely recounts it like a fable about power, success and failure.

Here's a little piece of trivia for you. As you learn in the film, only 50 Tucker Torpedoes were ever constructed back in 1948. When Tucker: The Man and His Dream was in production, 46 of those cars were still in existence, many of them still roadworthy. Coppola managed to commandeer 21 of those 46 to appear in the film's final scene. Pretty decent effort.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a really nice movie. It's the kind of sweet, uplifting, sugar-coated fare that is perfect for a Saturday afternoon TV movie. But as far as a biography goes, we get a lot more of the dream and a lot less of the man. While it is apparent that Coppola has a great deal of affection for the figure of Preston Tucker, when you consider some of his other films, it feels pretty uninspired. While I wouldn't say that Coppola was just going through the motions here, it seems apparent that he had lost some of the self-confidence he possessed in the seventies and therefore didn't try and push the envelope.

86) Flying High

Airplane! (1980)

Directors: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Starring: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Lorna Patterson, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Stack

It's a Saturday afternoon, we weren't heading out for a couple of hours, Kate had some college reading she needed to get onto and I had nothing to do, so I figured I'd sit down and watch a comedy. I wanted something really basic, and they don't get much more basic than spoofs. Enter Flying High.

Shell-shocked former air force pilot Ted Striker (Hays) boards an aeroplane for the first time since the war in order to try and save his relationship with air hostess Elaine Dickinson (Hagerty). When numerous passengers, including the plane's pilot and co-pilot, fall violently ill with food poisoning, the fate of everyone on board depends on whether Ted can overcome his fear and safely land the plane. Hilarity ensues.

I'm kind of ashamed to say that I'd never seen Flying High. Growing up, I used to be quite the fan of the spoof comedy genre. I've seen numerous 1980s and 1990s spoof comedies; Naked Gun, Hot Shots, Top Secret, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Spy Hard, Wrongfully Accused. Heck, I even saw Dracula: Dead and Loving It. So the fact that I hadn't seen Flying High, the one which sits at the top of the pile, is like saying you're a fan of gangster movies but you've just never got around to seeing The Godfather.

Like all really good spoofs, the central narrative does not read as anything particularly hilarious or absurd. The narrative of the film is a direct parody of the 1957 movie Zero Hour, about a shell-shocked ex-navy pilot who has to land a commercial plane filled with food poisoned passengers. So the storyline itself is played reasonably straight and the humour comes from the gags which fill the scenes, and Flying High is amazingly dense with gags. Rather than playing a certain interaction as a set up for a single payoff, there will be numerous gags layered on top of each other within a scene. The film employs numerous different types of gags too; there are sight gags (the emergence inflation tube being located on the inflatable co-pilot's belt buckle), puns and word play ("... and don't call me Shirley" as well as the brilliant confusion caused by radio transmissions when you have a pilot named Ouver and a co-pilot named Roger), non-sequiturs (having the co-pilot played by basketball superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but his presence only being acknowledged by one character), running jokes ("I picked the wrong day to quit smoking/drinking/sniffing glue/etc"). While the film directly parodies Zero Hour it is a more general parody of the disaster cycle of movies that was at it's height in the 1970s. So if you are aware of some of those films you will recognise certain passengers from other films; the guitar playing nun originally played by Helen Reddy in Airport 1975 and the sick little girl from the same film.

One thing which really made Flying High work at the time, though it has probably lost this impact today, is that rather than filling the cast with comic actors they used some notable dramatic actors. Flying High launched the spoof comedy careers of Leslie Nielsen and Lloyd Bridges, both of whom had been dramatic actors up until that point. I noted in my earlier blog on The Poseidon Adventure that it was difficult taking Leslie Nielsen seriously in his role as the ships captain because this is exactly the kind of role I'm used to seeing him play in spoof comedies. When Flying High was first released his casting would have had kind of the flipside effect. Because people were used to seeing him playing similar roles in serious movies, it made it all the more hysterical watching him ham it up. Similarly, Lloyd Bridges performance as the air traffic controller seemingly lampooned numerous previous roles of his. Both Nielsen and Bridges had their careers completely reinvented by the success of this film, to the point that there are a couple of generations now who would only recognise them as spoof actors.

The one thing which does bug me about the film though, is why the hell did they have to change the title of the film from Airplane! to Flying High for the Australia release? Was is simply because that isn't how we spell aeroplane here that they didn't think we could decipher what the film was about? That wasn't an issue for The Color Purple. And that's not the only example of a film with an English title having it's title changed for overseas releases in English speaking countries. It happens quite regularly. 13 going on 30 became Suddenly 30, Four Christmases became Four Holidays. I don't get it.

This spoof style of comedy has dated quite a bit (that being said it was always intended to be a bit hammy and groan inducing), so it doesn't quite pack the punch that it once did. I'd have to say the dating of the genre is mostly because it was so heavily imitated by numerous inferior films. Even now though, you get the feeling that Flying High is a cut above everything else in that genre. With this film, which one critic has since described as "the Citizen Kane of zany comedies", the Zucker brothers and Abraham usurped Mel Brooks as the kings of the spoof, a position they would reinforce with Top Secret and the Naked Gun series.

85) Batman Returns

Batman Returns (1992)


Director: Tim Burton

Starring: Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Michael Gough

We got back from our holidays this afternoon. I hadn't watched a movie for a while so was keen to watch one tonight, and inspired by the exhibition at ACMI Kate was keen to see one of the Tim Burton's that she hadn't, so she picked Batman Returns.

Corrupt tycoon Max Shreck (Walken) wants to build a power plant for Gotham City as his legacy, but can't get the mayor to approve it. What everyone doesn't know though, is that Shreck has designed his power plant to actually drain power from Gotham rather than supply it. After accidentally uncovering his scheme, Shreck's secretary Selina Kyle (Pfeiffer) is thrown from the top of the Shreck tower. However she is miraculously licked back to life by stray cats. She sews herself a fetishistic costume and ventures out into the night as the Catwoman, hell bent on revenge. Meanwhile, a grotesquely deformed man called the Penguin (DeVito), who has lived his entire life in the sewers of Gotham hatches a plan to make his ascent. He stages a kidnapping of the Mayor's baby, pretends to rescue him and is then applauded as a hero. Shreck sees an opportunity in the Penguin's new found popularity and convinces him to run for Mayor of Gotham. Bruce Wayne (Keaton) is convinced that there is something sinister about the Penguin's intentions so sets about investigating him.

Despite it being a favourite from my childhood I haven't watched Batman Returns for a number of years. I was quite surprised to see just how different it was to Burton's original, Batman. It was something I don't recall noticing before. Batman Returns is a much more noticeably Tim Burton film. The film has a completely different look. Anton Furst's film noir inspired Gotham City sets from the first film were not reused, but rather replaced by a more Gothic style depiction of the city (more gargoyles). The Penguin and Catwoman look much more like Tim Burton drawings than the Joker did. You really get the impression that after the young Tim Burton had turned Batman into one of the highest grossing films of all time, either Warner Brothers were willing to give him a bit more slack second time round or he tried to push things a bit further second time round.

One problem which has always seemed to plague film versions of Batman is the fact that the character of Batman/Bruce Wayne tends to get overshadowed by the villainous characters. It makes sense to an extent. In a series of movies revolving around the same hero it is the different villains which give the movies their flavour. But this seems to be a problem which has arisen more in Batman films than in James Bond or Indiana Jones or even Superman films. In Burton's original Batman it was Jack Nicholson who really stole the show as the Joker. Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins did slightly better at keeping the focus on the hero but was only really able to do so because it told an origins story and chose not to include any of the really iconic Batman villains. Even though Batman was a strong character again in The Dark Knight, he was once again overshadowed by Heath Ledger's brilliant performance as the Joker. Watching Batman Returns I really got the sense that the film was much more about the Penguin and Catwoman than it was about Batman. DeVito and Pfeiffer's characters have personal story lines in a way that Keaton's does not.. The fact that Bruce Wayne does not even appear until the 35 minute mark gives an indication as to just how much Burton was struggling to keep him central.

When Batman Begins came out there was a lot of publicity around the fact that Nolan was doing a dark Batman and this was treated as a real novelty. This really bugged me because after Joel Schumacher's franchise destroying, gay, laser-light spectaculars; Batman Forever and Batman and Robin (seriously, why have nipples on the bat suit?), people seemed to have forgotten that Burton's two Batman films were quite dark affairs. If anything, Warner Brothers decision to hand the reins over to Schumacher was as a result of Burton's films being considered a bit too dark. However, having watched Burton's films more recently, and seeing them in the light of Nolan's films, I've realised it is a very different type of darkness. Nolan's films have a darkness which comes out of a sense of menace and terror. His is an evil darkness. Burton's on the other hand is a sad darkness. In Batman Returns we feel sorry for the Penguin as much as, possibly even more than, we fear him and the character of Batman/Bruce Wayne, rather than being someone we think it would be cool to be, comes across as a rather lonely, reclusive, neurotic man.

Christopher Nolan has set the bar for Batman adaptations with his rebooted series. You can't really argue that fact. His films, particularly The Dark Knight, are brilliant. But lost in all the hype surrounding Nolan's films is the fact that Burton's reboot of Batman, in which he was trying to distance Batman from the campy 1960s television show the way Nolan was trying to distance Batman from the disasters that were Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, was a very admirable indeed. You have to look at Burton's films as completely different films from Nolan's, rather than as a part of an ongoing series, because they are trying to do and say different things, but they are still very much worth watching.